Army’s ultra light vehicle now in survivability testing

Thursday

Dec 12, 2013 at 12:01 AMDec 12, 2013 at 11:12 AM

By C. Todd Lopez ARNEWS

WASHINGTON — Two of the three vehicles in the Army’s ultra light vehicle program have now entered survivability testing in Nevada and Maryland, to evaluate both their blast and ballistic protection capability.

The third vehicle remains at the Army’s Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center, known as TARDEC, for testing there.

The TARDEC began development of three ultra light vehicles, or ULVs, in fall 2011, at the request of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. While the ULV will not be fielded as a combat vehicle, it does serve as a research and development platform that will ultimately yield data that can be used by other TARDEC agencies and program managers, as well as sister services to develop their own vehicles and equipment in the future.

“It’s all about sharing the data,” said Mike Karaki, the ULV’s program manager. “If we have an ability to share the data internally within TARDEC, and externally within the program managers and program executive offices, and beyond that with other government agencies, we will attempt to do that. It’s helping shape and inform future programs.”

“You want to be able to use anything and everything you can from this program to help reduce the duplication of efforts in the future,” he said.

“We tried to push the envelope in terms of state-of-the-art and out-of-the-box materials throughout the entire development process,” said Karaki.

The vehicle, from design to delivery, took only 16 months, Karaki said.

The ULV is hybrid vehicle powered by a diesel engine that drives an electric generator. That generator in turn powers two electric motors that turn the wheels. Two electric motors provide redundancy should one of the motors fail.

Karaki said choosing a hybrid system came from the need to develop a more survivable vehicle for Soldiers. He said the contractor was concerned about how to make the vehicle perform better in a blast event, and came to the conclusion that a hybrid was the better choice.

Because it is a hybrid vehicle, it has none of the standard equipment underneath the vehicle. It features instead a “clean underbody” that makes it more capable of withstanding something like an explosion from an improvised explosive device.

“If you keep less equipment, accessories, systems underneath the vehicle, and you allow the underbody geometry to do what it needs to do — have a clean underbody — you will be able to improve your chances of being able to direct a blast away from the vehicle,” he said.

Two of three vehicles are undergoing survivability testing now. The third vehicle is in Warren, Mich., at TARDEC’s Ground Systems Power and Energy Laboratory undergoing automotive testing and to evaluate its hybrid electric setup.

Karaki said eventually the two ULVs undergoing survivability testing will be destroyed as part of that testing. The third vehicle, the one at TARDEC, will be kept as a test platform.